


Her Boy

by sheltiesong



Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Gen, Red Special
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-12-25 23:00:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18270890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheltiesong/pseuds/sheltiesong
Summary: She didn’t always have a voice, back when she was only reclaimed wood and cast-off pieces, being worked under the sharp eyes and deft hands of her boy and his father. But she always had a soul ...





	Her Boy

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve never so much as touched an electric guitar in my life, couldn’t play a note or carry a tune if I tried, but the story of Brian May and his home-built guitar is a fascinating one. 
> 
> I’ve taken a little artistic license. Some timeframes and details from the Old Lady’s real story may be changed or compressed, but most of this is taken from interviews, articles, and books, at least this first part. Tags will be updated as future chapters are added, and the tale of their many years together unfolds.

She didn’t always have a voice, back when she was only reclaimed wood and cast-off pieces, being worked under the sharp eyes and deft hands of her boy and his father. But she always had a soul.

Her voice would come in time.

For now, though, she waited, as her neck was shaped and her cutaways smoothed, as the worm-worn bits of her were carefully filled with matchsticks that would never light with the fiery brightness of her burnished veneer.  
  
It was when her strings and frets were laid and her pickups and tremolo placed just _so_ that she truly started to come alive.

When her boy plugged her into that amp (as homemade as she was) she sang for the very first time, a low hum of feedback from the air pockets he’d given her. Her boy wanted her to talk as much as she did.

They sat for some moments like that, her susurrant murmur a counterpoint to his soft but growing smile. After a time, though, his long-fingered hands moved, the calloused tips of his left dancing along her neck while the right played with tone and phase. That soft smile broadened to triumphant laughter as he met his father’s eyes.

“She’s done properly ,” her boy’s dad said, as a grin twitched the corners of his lips.

—

Hers was not the only voice that called him. That bright, quick mind refused to be relegated to just one box, one passion, and many were the nights he was beckoned away from her by his stars and his studies. He didn’t yet have to choose.

Her boy might have continued like that, living life in his two worlds. Fire requires just the right amount of oxygen to light, after all.

Then came along that odd, exotic boy with a voice as unique as her own, and his lofty dreams of what could be. When Smile became Queen and four were forged from the remnants of three into something new and bright.

Her boy’s stars couldn’t contain him any longer. It was time for him to be the starlight, and for her to be his words.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have ideas for several more snippets of their life together, but is there anything in particular you want to see? Tell me in the comments! :)


End file.
